TE331: Principles of Analogue

Telecommunications

Lecture #5
AM, FM Radio Receivers
 Contents

 Radio Receivers

 Frequency Mixing/ Super-heterodyne principal

 Super-heterodyne Receivers

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 Receivers
Main functions of Receivers are;
 To intercept the electromagnetic wave in the
receiving antenna
 To extract the desired signal from the received
modulated signal that may be corrupted by
noise
 To amplify signal

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 Receivers
Classifications
 Radio broadcasting receivers
 Television receivers
 Communications receivers
 Code receivers
 Radar/Sonar Receivers

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 AM/FM Radio Receivers
Recall!
 Basic parameters of any communication system;
– Transmitters (Modulation)
– Channels (Transmission)
– Receivers (Demodulation)
 The system is frequency sharing (many
transmitters share a common medium)
 Receivers need to demodulate desired signals and
reject others transmitted at the same time from a
common shared medium.

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 AM/FM Radio Receivers
 In radio broadcasting the source signal is basically
audio
 Different audio signals have different spectrum
and different bandwidths
– Voice – 4 kHz
– Music – 15 kHz
– Hybrid signals
 AM radio limits modulating signal bandwidth to 5
kHz
 FM radio limits modulating signal bandwidth to
15 kHz

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 AM/FM Radio Receivers
 Features of a good receiver
– High fidelity
– Selectivity (Band rejection)
– Sensitivity (Noise rejection)
– Simplicity of circuitry and operation
– Adaptability to different aerials
 Basic design requirements
– Has to work in all radio broadcasting bands AM and
FM
– Tuneable required frequency range
– Filter characteristics
– Demodulate and recovery the original signal
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 AM/FM Radio Receivers

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 AM Radio Receivers
 It is desired that the receiver output be a
replica of the modulating signal that was
present at the transmitter input
 Main classes of radio receivers
– Crystal receivers** (very old technology)
– Tuned radio-frequency (TRF) receivers
– Super-heterodyne receivers

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 Tuned radio-frequency Receiver
 The TRF receiver consists of a number of
cascaded high-gain RF bandpass stages that are
tuned to the carrier frequency fc , followed by an
appropriate detector circuit

RF RF
Audio
Amplifier Amplifier Detector
Amplifier
& Tuning & Tuning

BPF

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 Tuned radio-frequency receiver
The major disadvantages of TRF are
 The difficulty in designing a tuneable RF stages for
desired station to be selected and the adjacent channel
stations to be totally rejected
 Difficulty in obtaining high gain at radio frequencies
and small stray coupling between the output and input
of the RF amplifying chain to avoid oscillation at 𝑓𝑐
 Poor Audio quality
 Instability – high frequency multistage amplifiers are
succeptible to oscillations

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 Tuned radio-frequency receiver
The major disadvantages of TRF…………
 Poor Audio quality
 Instability – high frequency multistage
amplifiers are susceptible to oscillations
 Bandwidth variations (maximum Q-factor is
120, minimum is 54)
**These disadvantages led to rise of heterodyne
receivers

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 Tuned radio-frequency receiver
 In TRF the Q-factor is used to determine tuneable
RF stages and bandwidth at low and high ends of
the spectrum
For AM band (540 – 1600 kHz)
f c 540kHz
At low frequency, BT  
Q Q
f c 1600kHz
At high frequency, BT  
Q Q
 Using the same Q-factor for low and high end
will result in receiving multiple stations at one
end or band rejection at another end
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 Superheterodyne Receivers
 Most receivers employ the superheterodyne
receiving technique
 The technique consists of either down-converting
or up-converting the input signal to some
convenient frequency band, followed by
extracting the information by using the
appropriate detector
 Super Heterodyning process can be explained by
the process of Frequency Mixing (Translation)
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 Frequency Mixing
 Spectrum of a modulated signal can be shifted to
a new frequency band for convenience in
processing of signals in a communication system
 This translation of the spectrum of a modulated
signal is known as frequency mixing, or
heterodyning process
 Used for the reception of all types of bandpass
signals, such as TV, Radio (FM&AM), satellite,
cellular, and radar signals

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 Frequency Mixing
 Frequency mixing process is done by Frequency
Mixers (devices that translate the frequency of
electromagnetic signals from one frequency
band to another)
 A Frequency Mixer is a three-port device. Two of
the ports are designated as input ports while the
third is an output port.
 New set of frequencies are generated at the
output of the mixer that do not exist initially at
either of the two inputs of the mixer.

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 Frequency Mixing
A signal generated by a Local Oscillator (LO) is
mixed with RF signal to produce a shifted
Intermediate Frequency (IF) signal

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 Frequency Translation and Mixing
 Bandpass filter input signal
s (t )  s(t )cos(2f LO t )
 m(t ) cos(2f c t )cos(2f LO t )
1 1
 m(t ) cos[2 ( f LO  f c )t ]  m(t ) cos[2 ( f LO  f c )t ]
2 2
 Taking the Fourier transform it follows that
S   f    M  f   f LO  f c   M  f   f LO  f c  
1
4
+  M  f   f LO  f c   M  f   f LO  f c  
1
4
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 Frequency Translation and Mixing
 BPF output is
– centered at f LO  f c
– with bandwidth 2B

x  t   12 m  t  cos  2  f LO  f c  t 

f LO  f c  f IF

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 Super-heterodyne Receiver
 Broadcast transmission occurs simultaneously
(not in isolation)
 A good way for our receivers to recover
information from the desired station is
through the use of tuneable BPF before
detection (filtering and demodulation)
 Heterodyne BPF is designed to have a narrow
bandwidth enough to select the desired
station and reject all others

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 Super-heterodyne Receiver
 Three Important Frequencies in Heterodyne
Receiver
– RF Radio Frequency: The center frequency the
signal is broadcast on
– IF Intermediate Frequency: Fixed frequency inside
the Rx. The RF signal is down-converted to this
frequency
– LO Local Oscillator: Tuneable frequency inside the
Rx used to translate the RF signal to the IF
frequency

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 Super-heterodyne AM Receiver
The intermediate Frequency
 For
AM, it is sharp and fixed filter (fixed at 455
kHz)
 Bandwidthequals to the bandwidth of one
AM channel approximately =10 kHz
 Needed cause it is too difficult to design a
tunable and sharp filter

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 Super-heterodyne AM Receiver

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 Super-heterodyne AM Receiver
Heterodyne receiver has five sections
 RF Section
 Mixer Section
 IF Section
 Detector Section
 Amplifier Section

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 Super-heterodyne AM Receiver

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 Super-heterodyne AM Receiver
 RF section: Consists of Pre-selector and Amplifier
 Picks up and amplifies signal of the desired
station by tuning the filter to the right carrier
frequency
 The RF amplifier provides amplification to the
desired signal and override additional noise
 The RF filter characteristic provides some
rejection of adjacent channel signals and noise
but the main adjacent channel rejection is
accomplished by the IF filter

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 Super-heterodyne AM Receiver
Frequency mixer:
 Consists of a Local Oscillator and a mixer

 Translates the carrier frequency 𝑓𝑐 to a fixed

intermediate frequency 𝑓𝐼𝐹 using a local
oscillator whose frequency 𝑓𝐿𝑂 = 𝑓𝑐 + 𝑓𝐼𝐹
 Mixing allows use of a single tuned IF amplifier
for all radio station signals in AM band

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 Super-heterodyne AM Receiver
IF section:
 Consists of series of amplifiers and band pass
filters
 Suppresses all interference using highly selective
filters and amplifies the signal for envelope
detection
 IF is lower that RF (down-converting)
– for easy of constructing less expensive high gain
amplifiers
– For less oscillation (frequency drifting)

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 Super-heterodyne AM Receiver
 Detector: Demodulates the AM signal to
obtain a baseband signal

 Audioamplifier: Amplifies the baseband signal

to have enough power to run a speaker
(output transducer)

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 Super-heterodyne FM Receiver

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 Super-heterodyne FM Receiver
 The stages and mechanism are almost the same
as AM receivers except for the frequency bands
and other FCC standards
Limiter circuit:
 Removes the noise present in the peaks
 Removes amplitude variation in the received
signal
 This is why FM is better that AM in terms of noise
suppression

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 Comparisons

FREQUENCY AM RECEIVERS FM RECEIVERS

RF range 540 kHz – 1600 kHz 88 MHz – 108 MHz
IF 455 kHz 10.7 MHz
LO range 995 kHz – 2055 kHz 98.7 MHz – 118.7 MHz

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